Europe and cycling and European cycling after 30,000+ miles on the road.The blog of UniCycle50.com.

Wednesday, 27 January 2016

No, I'm Sorry, You Can't Cycle-Tour for Free

I've read a couple of blog posts
recently whose titles have suggested it's possible to cycle-tour
entirely for free. When you read the blog's content, however, you
realise it isn't actually possible, or you can only get close to free
by behaving like a selfish arse, taking advantage of people,
sometimes people with a lot less than you have. I don't want to be a
selfish arse.

That said, you can
cycle-tour for very, very little. Last summer three complete
strangers and I tried an experiment. We wanted to see whether, on an
extremely small budget, it was possible to cycle a long
distance: approximately 3,500 miles along Europe's western coast from
Liverpool in the UK to Gibraltar on the Mediterranean. Our budget had
to cover everything except travel tickets (in our case, one ferry
ticket) and major repairs to bikes, and so our minimal funds had to
include all food, fuel to cook the food, drinks, accommodation, bike
consumables like inner tubes and spokes, and anything else we might
need along the way. It would also have to cover bottles of single
malt whisky, diamond tiaras and trips to the opera, but you won't be
surprised to learn that we didn't spend money on any of those.

Importantly, we wanted to do
this in a sustainable way. This meant not stealing stuff or raiding
bins, since one day the supermarket bins might be locked for good, or
– who knows? – people might stop throwing so much food away. It
also meant not using sites like Warm Showers or Couchsurfing. I know
that I move around too much to offer a future bed to a fellow cyclist
and so it would be unfair to take advantage of this free service
without returning the favour. Sheets have to be washed. Water has to
be heated. That would just be passing the cost on to someone else,
and we didn't want to do it like that.

We set the daily budget at just
£1 for each cyclist, which at the time was approximately US$1.50 or
€1.40. It's not much, but when you shop carefully and supplement
your food by foraging and fishing, it's just about doable. Oddly,
it's easier to get by on so little in a relatively expensive country
like the UK than it is in generally cheaper places like Spain and
Portugal. Britain's huge, ubiquitous supermarkets each carry a
massive range of budget lines – a large sliced loaf of bread for
40p ($0.60, €0.56), a pot of strawberry jam (that's jelly for US
cyclists) for 27p ($0.40, €0.38) and a tub of peanut butter for 60p
($0.90, €0.84) – whereas in Spain, the big supermarkets tended to
be on cycle-unfriendly roads and their cheapest lines aren't that
cheap anyway, and so we usually ended up buying from less economical,
tiny village supermarkets. Luckily, Spain was abundant in free,
roadside fruit, especially figs, and these are great once your
digestive system has worked out how to cope with the onslaught.

Usually in France, Spain and
Portugal we wild-camped. Wild-camping is fine but, for peace of mind,
it's better to stay legal. For this reason, throughout England and
Wales, we asked farmers if we could stick our tents in the far corner
of an unloved field. Of the twenty or so people we asked, only two
refused and they were tenant farmers; our staying there would have
caused problems if the landowner had found out. Sleeping at the farms
was great. Unlike when wild-camping, we could set up early, wake up
when our bodies wanted to and get a comfortable night's sleep in a
field with no nasty surprises, although we did share one with fifteen
curious bullocks who looked like they wanted to kick our heads in.

Did we manage it? Yes, we did. Just. It can be
done for very little and without taking advantage of anyone. That
said, I can't recommend it unless it's your only option. Wild-camping
and frugal dining hides you away from hotels, camp sites,
restaurants, bars and all those other places where you're likely to
meet people and, for me, it is finding interesting and inspiring, or
wacky and weird, people that makes a bike tour special. And, for that
reason alone, I won't be touring again on a budget of £1. But if my
finances deteriorate in future, it's reassuring to know I can always
afford a nice, long bike ride. I'll just need to get used to the figs
again.

2 comments:

Fantastic, am also planning on touring innexpensively this summer but my goal is simply to spend less than what I would have spent on fuel for my pickup over the same distance. I think I should be able to live fairly comfortably. I am not counting the food that I will eat regardless over that time though, only the extra calories that I will be consuming due to the extra riding time and any lodging that I use.

As Chris said, very reassuring! I'm about to set off on tour - to reach Australia (but there are no rules) and have a very limited budget - with a small amount of savings set aside for visas, short flights (if I can't find another way across the various ponds to be encountered). I WILL be using couch surfing, warm showers, Servas and 5W (I've just discovered the latter two).

Greetings!

UniCycle50.com

For country-specific cycle touring information or to see photos from my 22,000 mile ride, please visit UniCycle50.com and select the relevant option. And if you have information to add about a particular country, please send it via the form at the bottom of the relevant page.

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The book of my 2015 quest to cycle across Europe on £1 a day. Did we make it to Gibraltar?

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About Me

Between 2011 and 2013 I cycled 22,000 miles (35,500 km) around 53 countries of Europe. This blog once tracked that adventure but now I'm going to dedicate it to cycle touring, particularly European cycle touring.
The book of my trip - No Place Like Home, Thank God - is now out for Kindle and is available at Amazon.
For more info, see http://www.unicycle50.com